Last weekend I returned to Brooklyn Shoespace for a 5-hour class on making leather slippers. The bootmaking I did last month was amazing but extremely time-consuming. Now that I’m moving on to thinking about iterative design and how to quickly build some electronics into footwear I thought it might be good to learn how to make something a bit simpler. Slippers turned out to be a great fit. Here’s what we made:
The process is fairly straightforward. These are the main steps:
- Trace and cut leather according to pattern. Also cut rubber soles.
- Use rubber cement to tack upper to leather sole.
- Use dividers to measure distance of stitches from slippers edge, as well as stitch length.
- Punch sew holes with awl.
- Sew using a saddle stitch. Tip: for thread, use 4 times the length of the sewn edge + a little more.
- Paint bottom of leather soles + smooth side of rubber soles with shoe glue. Let dry.
- Very carefully attach rubber bottoms to the leather.
- Sand edges.
- Make & add tassles if desired!
Cut leather pieces, edged with rubber cement 
Leather tacked and clipped in place 
Marking stitch line with dividers 
Punch sew holes with awl 
Threading needle with waxed thread 
Completed sewing 
Soles with glue drying 
Attaching the rubber sole 
Sewing the tassle See completed slippers above. Next step: adding some electronics!
